Why Nobody Reads Your Blog Posts
The main reason. How you can recognise the problem.
What You Should Actually Be Talking About
Use the Overlap
Why Does Nobody Read Your Blog Posts?
If everything on your website is technically working fine and the posts are accessible, yet there are hardly any visits to the blog, then the issue very often lies with the content of the posts.
The Main Reason: The PR Department Writes the Blog Posts
The way businesses communicate with potential customers has fundamentally changed through the internet. While press releases were once an important form of communication, today the focus is on content that is valuable to the customer. So what is different?
Who, apart from the company management, actually wants to read pure press releases? Is it not the case that we much prefer to consume engaging content, or tips and guidance on problems that are affecting us right now? That is exactly what people actively search for (on Google).
Press or promotional releases do not help here because they cannot assist the person searching. At the same time, however, employees in PR departments are practically trained to create promotional copy for their own company. Genuine added value is usually absent from these texts.
How Can You Tell Whether Your Blog Posts Are Actually PR Texts?
The content consists of: "promotions and discounts", your customers' successes, your own successes, the last summer party, the last Christmas celebration. You only write about yourself or your company, you introduce new employees, and so on. But are these topics not important regardless? Should you not "do good things and talk about them"?
Of course, but the content described above is better suited to social media or dedicated subpages. Under no circumstances should it form the basis of a company blog. Because who, outside your company, is genuinely interested in it? What you should actually be talking about: The core of your blog should consist of questions that go through your potential customers' minds before they buy from you.
These questions should simultaneously serve as the headings for your posts. The content of the posts should then comprehensively answer these questions. Customer question = blog post heading -> The content: answers the question. If you follow this simple formula, you will find readers for your blog posts.
Additional Benefits:
Your blog posts become "shareable content" for social media – because they are helpful. Other websites will link to your posts – this helps with Google ranking. The external perception of your company changes – because you are no longer only reporting about yourself.
Use the overlap. There are two components that both play an important role in whether blog posts resonate with an audience. One is what you (or the management) would like to talk about. This is usually where the problem lies. Just because you want to talk about something does not mean that anyone in your target audience wants to read it.
The other component is what your customers are genuinely interested in and what they want to read. This is where the issue arises: most of the time, what the PR department wants to say is not what your customers are actually interested in. If you want to overcome this disconnect, you need to bridge the gap between these two components.
An overlap must emerge. What you should actually achieve is a "crossover". This means the part you want to communicate at least partially coincides with what your customers are interested in. If you manage that, then your customers will also read your posts.
This overlap should be the content of your next blog post. And that is exactly what you should keep in mind going forward. Otherwise, you will only be writing PR articles or promotional texts and not high-quality blog posts. This is admittedly something that most board members, managing directors, or PR departments do not want to hear.
Nevertheless, you should make them aware of it so they understand why the content is not consumable for the intended readers. If you have further questions about this, simply get in touch with us. We are happy to help.
